I’ve been happily running Windows 2000 more or less since it’s been released. It’s probably the most stable desktop operating system I’ve ever come across, but Microsoft is shooting it dead, and Adobe wants whatever’s left. So, I need to upgrade in order to be able to continue opening files that my customers send me.
One Vista installation attempt later, and I can’t say I’m terribly impressed. Strangely enough, I was able to install my wacky sound card, but it failed to install my mouse (!), keyboard (!!), and both video cards (one by ATI, the other by Nvidia). Plus, it wasn’t happy about how I installed the upgrade, so I’m going to have to reinstall the whole thing anyway.
I eventually got the mouse working by unplugging it, plugging it back in, and rebooting (I really thought we’d be past those days by now!). And that for a PS/2 optical mouse.
My Microsoft keyboard required me to download special software to get access to the hotkeys.
The ATI video card (main display) defaulted to a 800x600 SVGA display. There’s no driver for my exact model (RADEON 7000), but the 7200 driver seemed to work.
There is an exact driver match for my Nvidia GeForce FX5500 video card (two secondary displays), but it apparently doesn’t work. The reason? Error 43. I kid you not. Numeric error codes are apparently still in vogue.
I can’t wait until I try to actually install software on Vista…
So, this post is being written on Windows 2000, and I’ll try again some time this weekend, I guess.
